PROFESSOR MOLETSANE APPOINTED AS DR JL DUBE CHAIR

UKZN’s Faculty of Education is set to accelerate its efforts to develop rural education in South Africa with the appointment of Professor Relebohile Moletsane as Professor and Dr JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in September.

The Dr JL Dube Chair will endeavour to improve and advance rural education through the development of scholarship which would include preparing education students with a repertoire of competencies suitable for teaching in a rural environment.To this end Professor Moletsane envisages interdisciplinary collaborations at UKZN, partnerships with other tertiary institutions in South Africa and augmenting existing rural development programmes within the Faculty to promote rural education. Initially, the rural community of Vulindlela will reap the benefits of activities implemented by the Dr JL Dube Chair in Rural Education, however this is likely to expand to other rural areas in time.

“Our focus will be on teacher education in rural schools. How exactly do we prepare our students to teach in rural schools is an on-going project but we want to take it further and establish how teachers in rural schools could mentor our students and how they (students) fit in rural schools. We’d like to establish reciprocal relations between our students and in-service teachers in rural schools,” said Professor Moletsane.

A second priority of the Chair would be scrutinising community well-being as a contributor to effective teaching and learning at rural schools.According to Professor Moletsane illness, social problems and poverty experienced by rural children may result in absenteeism from school which in turn negatively impacts on their education.

Linked to developing community well-being is the empowerment of young and older women living in rural areas, a project of great importance to Professor Moletsane who said: “We need to understand how women view their poverty, economic status and the challenges they face…Our methodology is participatory in the sense that we believe that women themselves should identify the issues that most concern them and with our facilitation identify strategies to address their problems.”

Concerned by the fact that many young people are unenthusiastic about teaching in rural communities, Professor Moletsane hopes that her efforts would ultimately encourage more teaching graduates to consider filling vacancies in rural schools. “I would like to see change where young people from both rural and urban areas actually go and teach in rural schools,” she said.

Professor Moletsane believes that rural teachers overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness due to their experiences of teaching at poor resourced schools, and an acceptance of poor learning outcomes, needed to be empowered. She said the professional empowerment of rural teachers needed to occur so that they “see themselves as capable and empowered to change their own schools and teaching environments.”

In terms of research Professor Moletsane would like to see a theorised study undertaken to establish the growth of rural education. She encourages education students who are at the tail end of their masters studies to consider the possibility of embarking on doctoral research with emphasis on rural education.

Responding to her appointment Professor Moletsane said: “I am chuffed and really excited. A few years ago I thought to myself that I would like to dedicate the last 10 years of my career to rural development so this may sound like a cliché but this appointment is a dream come true for me.”